If there is a specific literary volume by a Chicano poet that need stand at attention in any public and/or personal library, it most definitely must be titled, Viaje / Trip, by the late raul r. salinas. Although born in San Antonio, Texas in 1934, salinas was raised in the barrios of East Austin and in following the modus operandi of many a Chicano youth growing up in the barrio, salinas succumbed to la vida loca. He would spend nearly 12 years in the span of two decades at four of the country’s harshest prisons; Soledad, Huntsville, Leavenworth, and Marion. The poetry and prose that make up Viaje / Trip led me to ponder whether or not prison life was responsible for crafting such a power house of a human voice. And if so, is it immoral to thank salinas for choosing the life of crime as a young man.
As early as 1964 salinas began producing poetry and prose for The Echo, a prison periodical published at the Texas State Prison of Huntsville. Despite the fact that they were obviously writings of a novice poet, salinas’s words shone bright and speckled with verses of brilliance. It would be on the heels of 1970 while serving a stint at the Kansas Federal Penitentiary of Leavenworth that a group of inmates self-published a prison magazine called New Era. In the heart of the magazine appeared a five page Whitmanesque poem titled, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” penned by a pinto named raul r. salinas. A 35 year old poet preferring the lowercase lettering of his name in honor of and inspired by e. e. cummings.
In a written dedication to Black Panther member, Eldridge Cleaver, “A Trip Through The Mind Jail,” would reappear as the introductory poem in the 1973 publication of salinas’s first book, Viaje / Trip. So begins the viaje, “LA LOMA / Neighborhood of my youth / demolished, erased forever from / the universe. / You live on, captive, in the lonely / cellblocks of my mind,” writes salinas. “Neighborhood of endless hills / muddied streets – all chuckhole lined – / that never drank asphalt. / Kids barefoot/snotty-nosed / playing marbles/munching on bean tacos / (the kind you’ll never find in a café) / 2 peaceful generations removed from / their abuelos’ revolution.” With escalated cadence the viaje continues through the poeta’s mind, all at the same time realizing and not realizing solace in its closing words, “Flats, Los Marcos, Maravilla, Calle Guadalupe, / Magnolia / Buena Vista, Mateo, La Seis, Chiquis, / El Sur and all the Chicano neighborhoods that / now exist and once existed; / somewhere…someone remembers…” Seguro que si, we remember. Que Viva the Cockroach Poet!
Viaje / Trip by raul r. salinas published by Hellcoal Press, June 1973
new posts in all blogs
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: guest writers, raulsalinas, Add a tag
By: msedano,
on 10/1/2009
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: memorial, creativity, social change, Juan Felipe Herrera, spirituality, poetry, poet, women and performance, social change, memorial, National Hispanic Cultural Center, raulsalinas, Juan Felipe Herrera, social commentary, women and performance, National Hispanic Cultural Center, raulsalinas, Add a tag
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 2/27/2008
From Lisa, La Blogista: We hope this stirs and ignites you. Please leave a comment and more importantly take raulsalinas' example to heart....Gracias to Juan Felipe Herrera
hail raúlrsalinas :: 1934 – 2008 :: hail liberationlove raúlr was in red. he came in lower-case, strutting down thru the brown cadre in red, a red bandanna across his forehead & taut around his black tresses down to his shoulders, smilin, boppin’ slow & glowin’ hard, in blue tramos planchados & curled to show the calcos spit-shined black solid, bluish tattoos, turquoise rings & gold medallions, a slung-fine chain swingin’ down the black spaghetti-thin belt, under the amber light in the center of the waiting audience, this is where the street-royal carnal found his calling, throttled the mic & peered into the brown cadre huddled on the floors, some of us squeezed against the shadowy aisles, the rest of us in crescent shaped circles, in strange awe, smeared hot against each other’s shoulder bones, the dark jeweled man in red stood under that first-time sparkle-light, his veined muscled arms swayed at his sides, then, he spoke, his bold baritone sounds found a silky-river way into our head, then coursed through our blood as if we were one blood, what was he all about? what was happening to us? where were we headed, now that we had been set off in motion? raulr was riffin’, blowin’, boppin’, snappin’ spittin’, talkin’-singin’ for the new freedom-body, without the locks, fetters & guards of officialized history, policies, and summations of our multi-dimensional self. november 13th, 1973, raulr appeared in the morning, at the floricanto first national chicano literature conference at USC, thirty-eight years old, one year after he had finished doing his time at leavenworth penitentiary, i sat in the center row, dressed in a tzotzil tunic i had brought back from chiapas in ‘70, miguel mendez, tomás rivera, teresa palomo acosta, zeta acosta by the doorway, then raulr popped the mic again & flowed into “un trip thru the mind jail y otras excursions,” he was speakin’ black, caló, tex-mex, chicano & some kind of san francisco beat mantra chakra choppin’ language meant to pierce your awareness: who are you? who did you think you were? what is oppression? how is it constructed? how many of your rooms does it occupy? who else resides in these chambers? is there a way out? then, the baritone voice slid back into the crimson body under the lights – raúlrsalinas ambled away, into the fresh trembling borderless nation. raúlr’s nation was borderless, he had crossed it, on foot as on the page & the stage, speaking, riffin’ & teaching human verses & unity actions – from working class “barbed-wired existence” barrios, from the land of high school force-outs, from grave stones of bullet-riddled camaradas, from “narcotic driven nerviosidad,” from suicided “colonias” & familias, to “ex-convictos activistas doing good in cities of chavalos gone bad,” to “trenzas indigenas,” dedicated to a revitalized indi@ collectivity, to “cantor de cantinas, pasándole poems a perennial pachukos prendidos, hoping to ease their pain,” “cantando colores de flores in arco iris danza,” ”learning en la lucha,” honoring the oak tree at the margins of a desolate collective capitol, honoring “indias, comadres wearing ski-boots so essential para caminar.” raúlr too was a walker, a walker-writer of the chican@ inferno & finder-seer of "rainbow people spirit." raulrsalinas was a true liberator: a kind fire-word man of soul-jazzed languages, a writer within & without prison walls, a socio-political mind-jail wall-breaker-scribe-singer, a collector, reader & translator of stolen cultura-tablets, a speaker of & for tender homage & eulogy to the invisibilized, a fearless warrior seeking the paths to our indigenous selves, lands & pueblos, relentless in responding to the “animales transnacionales” & militarized hydra machines, a shaman in demin, re-conjuring herstories of unwritten pachuka murders & oppressions across the southwest & pacific northwest, undoing the anthropological & sociological tyrannies of el pachuko, that is, all of us, in lower-case motion – raulr sings in a mid-fifties bebop alto & baritone gold-gilded sax voice, from pine ridge to chiapas, from el barrio de la loma to the diné rez, from shoshone & arapaho tierras to la selva lacandona, healing-gathering, healing-working – “respeto, paz y dignidad,” raúlr offers his life-quest harvests to all of us. what else, raúlr? you were speaking of lower-case love – everything we all are, have been & will ever be. in liberation --juan felipe Herrera, 2/25/08
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And from poet Oscar Bermeo:
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More teatro news, Denver-style
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Thursday – Saturday, February 28 – March 1 Thursday – Saturday, March 6 – 8 7:30pm King Center Rawls Courtyard Theatre Auraria Campus, Denver Tickets: $12 General Admission $5 UC Denver students Sponsored by: Theatre, Film and Video Production Department.
José Mercado, new Assistant Professor of the Theatre, Film & Video Production Department, directs a contemporary telling of a classic comedy driven by mix-ups, coincidence and slapstick humor, with the events confined within the action of a single day. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s earliest, shortest and most farcical play. It tells the story of two sets of identical twins and the wild mishaps that occur through mistaken identity. Before joining the faculty at UC Denver, Mercado was head of the theatre department at North High School where he directed "The Zoot Suit Riots", the first high school production to play at Denver Performing Arts Center’s Buell Theatre. Prior to teaching, he worked as an actor in Los Angeles after earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from UCLA. He is a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and Actor’s Equity Association. He is also a member of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Women and Creativity Conference/Lisa Alvarado Shameless Self-Promotion Department
Gente: I've been blessed enough to have been asked to perform The Housekeeper's Diary at the conference -- Friday, March 7, at 8 PM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center's Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a reading for high school students at the Center's Wells Fargo Auditorium, Monday, March 10th at 10 AM.
Conference Info: Women and Creativity 2008 is organized and presented by the National Hispanic Cultural Center in partnership with more than 25 local arts organizations, artists, writers and independently owned-business. This year, we have an inspiring offering of more than 50 exhibitions, performances, workshops, classes, and engaging discussions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Women and Creativity partners invite you to dedicate an afternoon, evening or entire weekend in March to attend events and workshops that awaken and nourish your own creativity and support the creativity of our communities. Although we shine a special light on women’s creativity during this festival, we invite and encourage the participation of men at all events.
The National Hispanic Cultural Center, along with our partners in Women and Creativity 2008, believe that creativity, art and self-expression are central to sustaining healthy individuals, organizations, business and communities – so, join in and celebrate the creative women in your community and the creativity inside yourself.
There will also be a fabulous PEÑA FEMENINA Sunday, March 9th at NHCC's LA FONDA DEL BOSQUE;
Other Artists:
Alma Jarocha,
Leticia Cuevas, Anabel Marín, Otilio Ruiz, Victor Padilla
Jessica López
Bailaora Xicana, Flamenco
marisol encinias, vicente griego, ricardo anglada
Lenore Armijo
Angélica
Cuevas
National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 4th St, SW Albuquerque, New Mexico
Teatro Luna has a BRAND NEW SHOW opening on March 6th, but you can catch it now! This Saturday and Sunday see a sneak preview of Teatro Luna's most intimate show yet... SOLO TU, a collection of four interwoven solos all about different women's experiences with PREGNANCY.
One woman thinks she's finally built the perfect family - Mom, Dad, Cute Kid- until an invasion of mice makes her wonder what's really going on. Another woman finds herself caught up in the worst kind of Baby-Daddy-Single-Mama Drama. Meanwhile, a woman in her third year of trying to get pregnant decides her pregnant friends make her want to vomit, and her close friend wrestles with pro-life activists, hospital robes, and how she feels about having an abortion in her 30's.
SHOW RUN: March 6-April 6 2008
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 7:30 pm
Sundays @ 6pm
Chicago Dramatists 1105 W. Chicago Ave, at Milwaukee
Tickets $15, Student and Senior Discount on Thursdays and Sundays only, $10
$12 Group Sale price, parties of 8 or more
For tickets, visit www.teatroluna.org
Lisa Alvarado
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: memorial, poetry, social commentary, social change, political art, raulsalinas, social change, memorial, raulsalinas, political art, Add a tag
By: Lisa Alvarado,
on 2/21/2008
Blog: Sugar Frosted Goodness (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: little mermaid, Red, joanne lee, Add a tag
By: Joa,
on 7/16/2007
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: raulsalinas, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 4 of 4
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: guest writers, raulsalinas, Add a tag
2 Comments on Guest Columnist: Jesse Tijerina, last added: 10/3/2009
Display Comments
Add a Comment
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: memorial, creativity, social change, Juan Felipe Herrera, spirituality, poetry, poet, women and performance, social change, memorial, National Hispanic Cultural Center, raulsalinas, Juan Felipe Herrera, social commentary, women and performance, National Hispanic Cultural Center, raulsalinas, Add a tag
From Lisa, La Blogista: We hope this stirs and ignites you. Please leave a comment and more importantly take raulsalinas' example to heart....Gracias to Juan Felipe Herrera
hail raúlrsalinas :: 1934 – 2008 :: hail liberationlove raúlr was in red. he came in lower-case, strutting down thru the brown cadre in red, a red bandanna across his forehead & taut around his black tresses down to his shoulders, smilin, boppin’ slow & glowin’ hard, in blue tramos planchados & curled to show the calcos spit-shined black solid, bluish tattoos, turquoise rings & gold medallions, a slung-fine chain swingin’ down the black spaghetti-thin belt, under the amber light in the center of the waiting audience, this is where the street-royal carnal found his calling, throttled the mic & peered into the brown cadre huddled on the floors, some of us squeezed against the shadowy aisles, the rest of us in crescent shaped circles, in strange awe, smeared hot against each other’s shoulder bones, the dark jeweled man in red stood under that first-time sparkle-light, his veined muscled arms swayed at his sides, then, he spoke, his bold baritone sounds found a silky-river way into our head, then coursed through our blood as if we were one blood, what was he all about? what was happening to us? where were we headed, now that we had been set off in motion? raulr was riffin’, blowin’, boppin’, snappin’ spittin’, talkin’-singin’ for the new freedom-body, without the locks, fetters & guards of officialized history, policies, and summations of our multi-dimensional self. november 13th, 1973, raulr appeared in the morning, at the floricanto first national chicano literature conference at USC, thirty-eight years old, one year after he had finished doing his time at leavenworth penitentiary, i sat in the center row, dressed in a tzotzil tunic i had brought back from chiapas in ‘70, miguel mendez, tomás rivera, teresa palomo acosta, zeta acosta by the doorway, then raulr popped the mic again & flowed into “un trip thru the mind jail y otras excursions,” he was speakin’ black, caló, tex-mex, chicano & some kind of san francisco beat mantra chakra choppin’ language meant to pierce your awareness: who are you? who did you think you were? what is oppression? how is it constructed? how many of your rooms does it occupy? who else resides in these chambers? is there a way out? then, the baritone voice slid back into the crimson body under the lights – raúlrsalinas ambled away, into the fresh trembling borderless nation. raúlr’s nation was borderless, he had crossed it, on foot as on the page & the stage, speaking, riffin’ & teaching human verses & unity actions – from working class “barbed-wired existence” barrios, from the land of high school force-outs, from grave stones of bullet-riddled camaradas, from “narcotic driven nerviosidad,” from suicided “colonias” & familias, to “ex-convictos activistas doing good in cities of chavalos gone bad,” to “trenzas indigenas,” dedicated to a revitalized indi@ collectivity, to “cantor de cantinas, pasándole poems a perennial pachukos prendidos, hoping to ease their pain,” “cantando colores de flores in arco iris danza,” ”learning en la lucha,” honoring the oak tree at the margins of a desolate collective capitol, honoring “indias, comadres wearing ski-boots so essential para caminar.” raúlr too was a walker, a walker-writer of the chican@ inferno & finder-seer of "rainbow people spirit." raulrsalinas was a true liberator: a kind fire-word man of soul-jazzed languages, a writer within & without prison walls, a socio-political mind-jail wall-breaker-scribe-singer, a collector, reader & translator of stolen cultura-tablets, a speaker of & for tender homage & eulogy to the invisibilized, a fearless warrior seeking the paths to our indigenous selves, lands & pueblos, relentless in responding to the “animales transnacionales” & militarized hydra machines, a shaman in demin, re-conjuring herstories of unwritten pachuka murders & oppressions across the southwest & pacific northwest, undoing the anthropological & sociological tyrannies of el pachuko, that is, all of us, in lower-case motion – raulr sings in a mid-fifties bebop alto & baritone gold-gilded sax voice, from pine ridge to chiapas, from el barrio de la loma to the diné rez, from shoshone & arapaho tierras to la selva lacandona, healing-gathering, healing-working – “respeto, paz y dignidad,” raúlr offers his life-quest harvests to all of us. what else, raúlr? you were speaking of lower-case love – everything we all are, have been & will ever be. in liberation --juan felipe Herrera, 2/25/08
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
And from poet Oscar Bermeo:
Just wanted to pass along that last week, there was a tribute to raulsalinas
Among the readers sharing their thoughts and presenting the work of Raul
Among the readers sharing their thoughts and presenting the work of Raul
Alejandro Murguía
Tomás Riley Francisco
J. Dominguez
Marc Pinate
Naomi Quiñones
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Nina Serrano
Jack Hirschman
Darren de Leon
Tomás Riley Francisco
J. Dominguez
Marc Pinate
Naomi Quiñones
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Nina Serrano
Jack Hirschman
Darren de Leon
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More teatro news, Denver-style
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare Thursday – Saturday, February 28 – March 1 Thursday – Saturday, March 6 – 8 7:30pm King Center Rawls Courtyard Theatre Auraria Campus, Denver Tickets: $12 General Admission $5 UC Denver students Sponsored by: Theatre, Film and Video Production Department.
José Mercado, new Assistant Professor of the Theatre, Film & Video Production Department, directs a contemporary telling of a classic comedy driven by mix-ups, coincidence and slapstick humor, with the events confined within the action of a single day. The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare’s earliest, shortest and most farcical play. It tells the story of two sets of identical twins and the wild mishaps that occur through mistaken identity. Before joining the faculty at UC Denver, Mercado was head of the theatre department at North High School where he directed "The Zoot Suit Riots", the first high school production to play at Denver Performing Arts Center’s Buell Theatre. Prior to teaching, he worked as an actor in Los Angeles after earning his Master of Fine Arts degree in Theatre from UCLA. He is a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild and Actor’s Equity Association. He is also a member of the Denver Commission on Cultural Affairs.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Women and Creativity Conference/Lisa Alvarado Shameless Self-Promotion Department
Gente: I've been blessed enough to have been asked to perform The Housekeeper's Diary at the conference -- Friday, March 7, at 8 PM at the National Hispanic Cultural Center's Roy E. Disney Center for the Performing Arts, as well as a reading for high school students at the Center's Wells Fargo Auditorium, Monday, March 10th at 10 AM.
Conference Info: Women and Creativity 2008 is organized and presented by the National Hispanic Cultural Center in partnership with more than 25 local arts organizations, artists, writers and independently owned-business. This year, we have an inspiring offering of more than 50 exhibitions, performances, workshops, classes, and engaging discussions in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.
Women and Creativity partners invite you to dedicate an afternoon, evening or entire weekend in March to attend events and workshops that awaken and nourish your own creativity and support the creativity of our communities. Although we shine a special light on women’s creativity during this festival, we invite and encourage the participation of men at all events.
The National Hispanic Cultural Center, along with our partners in Women and Creativity 2008, believe that creativity, art and self-expression are central to sustaining healthy individuals, organizations, business and communities – so, join in and celebrate the creative women in your community and the creativity inside yourself.
There will also be a fabulous PEÑA FEMENINA Sunday, March 9th at NHCC's LA FONDA DEL BOSQUE;
Other Artists:
Alma Jarocha,
Leticia Cuevas, Anabel Marín, Otilio Ruiz, Victor Padilla
Jessica López
Bailaora Xicana, Flamenco
marisol encinias, vicente griego, ricardo anglada
Lenore Armijo
Angélica
Cuevas
National Hispanic Cultural Center 1701 4th St, SW Albuquerque, New Mexico
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Teatro Luna Fabulousness!
Teatro Luna has a BRAND NEW SHOW opening on March 6th, but you can catch it now! This Saturday and Sunday see a sneak preview of Teatro Luna's most intimate show yet... SOLO TU, a collection of four interwoven solos all about different women's experiences with PREGNANCY.
One woman thinks she's finally built the perfect family - Mom, Dad, Cute Kid- until an invasion of mice makes her wonder what's really going on. Another woman finds herself caught up in the worst kind of Baby-Daddy-Single-Mama Drama. Meanwhile, a woman in her third year of trying to get pregnant decides her pregnant friends make her want to vomit, and her close friend wrestles with pro-life activists, hospital robes, and how she feels about having an abortion in her 30's.
Saturday @ 7:30 pm and Sunday @ 6pm
SHOW RUN: March 6-April 6 2008
Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays @ 7:30 pm
Sundays @ 6pm
Chicago Dramatists 1105 W. Chicago Ave, at Milwaukee
Tickets $15, Student and Senior Discount on Thursdays and Sundays only, $10
$12 Group Sale price, parties of 8 or more
For tickets, visit www.teatroluna.org
0 Comments on Juan Felipe Hererra on raulsalinas as of 1/1/1900
Add a Comment
Blog: La Bloga (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: memorial, poetry, social commentary, social change, political art, raulsalinas, social change, memorial, raulsalinas, political art, Add a tag
Juan Felipe Herrera will grace La Bloga next week with some
thoughts about raulsalinas...
thoughts about raulsalinas...
Here's some things to ponder....
Politico, Prisoner, street poet...aside from these obvious roles,
what is the lasting impact of raulsalinas?
What are both the specific and universal messages in his work?
What were his spheres of influence as a writer and poet?
How has he personally affected your writing, your ethos, your sensibilities?
How would you summarize his example as to what it means to be a man,
a Chicano (a), a creative person, a spiritual person?
Share your thoughts and your stories here with us next week....
0 Comments on raulsalinas lives as of 1/1/1900
Add a Comment
Blog: Sugar Frosted Goodness (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: little mermaid, Red, joanne lee, Add a tag
After the last SFG:Red, I sort of got hooked to the idea of red in fairy tales. This is based off Disney's Little Mermaid, with her luscious red hair.
4 Comments on Little Mermaid, last added: 7/17/2007
Display Comments
Add a Comment
I loved the length and focus of this piece. The concise mixture of commentary and quoted lines read just right.
Excellent review, Jesse. I'm really pleased that you are contributing more to La Bloga. Keep up the good work.